Hawk Squawk: October 9th

Another incredible week at HD Stafford Middle. As you head into your Thanksgiving long weekend, please take a moment to join us in celebrating successes from this past week in our Hawk Squawk: October 9th. And of course, be sure to share with your family and friends.

1. HD Stafford Raises Money and Awareness For Cancer: This past week, we celebrated and honoured a Canadian hero with our Terry Fox fundraising campaign and run. While it is tradition to go for a run, in honour of the historic attempt to cross Canada Terry made, one of the most powerful parts of the day was seeing how many students were impacted by cancer in their circle of family and friends. When asked to stand at the assembly if they had a family member or friend who has had cancer there were few students still seated. Powerful. Thank you to Mrs Hayer for sharing her own personal connection to cancer and to the entire community who raised over $850.00 for the Terry Fox Foundation.

2. Student Rocks Out On The Radio: This past week, our resident DJ, Emmett had the opportunity of a life time. After Ms Tessler wrote a passionate letter to Rock 101 about how much this student loves music and music trivia, the radio station invited him down to visit the studio and even sit down with Willy, the morning host. Emmett got to share his story and even introduce a song. It is so amazing when we can truly connect passion and learning in the real-world environment.

3. PowToon French: When learning a new language, it is important to not only understand the written form, but to be able to use it in conversation. And the students in Mr Grill’s class did just that using a great (and free) online tool called PowToon. Students were able to create animated dialogues in French using their own voices to create the audio. And the results involved both fun and high level learning. You can click here to see an example. Nice to see technology being used to empower the learning of our students.

4. IFA Spends Some Time Gossiping: There is no question that one of the harmful things that can occur during the middle years (and sometimes beyond) is talking about people behind their back. Gossiping is a social issue that the IFA students took to task this past week through some role play and drama games. Learning about how distorted a message can get the more people it goes through is a valuable way to understand why gossiping is not a character trait we want to develop. It will be great to see how our students transfer what they have learned through these lessons into their everyday interactions with peers.

5. Grade Sevens Build Furniture In Drama: While one would expect that furniture building would occur in our wood shop, this past week Mrs Yzerman had the students in grade 7 playing a great drama game involving household items. The goal for each group was to create a scene where each student was a piece of furniture while one actor performed the scene using each item. The creativity was amazing as students turned themselves into chairs, tables and even a swing. Love seeing the fine arts being enjoyed during explorations time.